Tuesday, January 16, 2018

It has been too long since we gave you guys an update on the development of Oceanhorn 2: Knights of the Lost Realm. Well, all five of us have been focusing on the game, and when you're really concentrated on your work, the time flies!

Grand Core: The city sized machine in the heart of Capital.

It feels like it was only yesterday when we released our first gameplay video of Oceanhorn 2 and even let people play the game at Nordic Game, but the truth is it has been months! The reception of the gameplay video was awesome. We could not get enough of all the impressions from youtube and forums. The excitement of our audience really inspired us to work harder. After we came back to our studio, we were determined to move to the next step with the production!

Capital's seedier backside

So, what have we been up to? We have been building an adventure! More gameplay, more story, more levels, more worlds. A city. Capital is one of the central locations of Oceanhorn 2's story and it offers tons of open-ended exploration for curious adventurers. In the heart of the city is the gigantic machine Grand Core.

Meeting with friends at Master Mayfair's penthouse study

We hope to bring you more updates in the future, along with some video teasers to give you a real good look at the game! Productions like this require a lot of time and effort, but the outcome will be a cool video game
so it is all worth the trouble! When you are making your dream project, you don't count the hours.

Thursday, June 22, 2017

Nintendo Switch is an amazing video game console and when I first got my hands on it, I immediately fell in love with it. The ability to go from portable mode to TV works flawlessly, and it all comes down to the genius design of the console. Nintendo has nailed the screen size of the device, to diminish the disparity between the modes – making sure the same game works perfectly on both modes. We investigated a lot of this when we ported a portable game (iPhone, iPad) to the big screen for PC and consoles and it is not as simple as it sounds. People have different expectations when it comes to big screen titles.

Oceanhorn on Switch is probably the most definite version of the game. The game is based on the remastered PC version of Oceanhorn and you can play it in both portable and TV mode. The game runs beautifully 60 fps / 1080p in docked mode and equally impressively 60 fps / 720p in portable mode. The game includes an amazing soundtrack from the industry legends Nobuo Uematsu and Kenji Ito, and our own brilliant composer Kalle Ylitalo. Voice talents range from Ray Chase (Final Fantasy XV, Noctis) and Kevan Brighting (Stanley Parable, Narrator) to Fryda Wolf (Mass Effect Andromeda, Sara Ryder). We could not be more excited to give Nintendo fans a chance to enter the world of Oceanhorn.

Oceanhorn on Switch is probably the most definite version of the game.

From the personal perspective of a small indie developer, this moment feels historical. Like many others, I grew up with Nintendo consoles and games, and this Kyoto-based company will always have a special place in my heart. Nintendo has played a crucial part in the history of video games ever since the dawn of home consoles, and they keep setting the standard for video game entertainment from one decade to another.

From this love and admiration, comes my driving force to cherish the experiences I had in my childhood. I got into making video games, because of the ever-inspiring experiences such as Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, and Zelda.

Oceanhorn is a game for the Nintendo fans, because it was made by a bunch of them. We are well aware that it is a smaller title and a different title from many of the console experiences that inspired it – but I truly believe that we were able to capture some of the essence of the classics in this game, as well as establish Oceanhorn as a franchise of its own.

Monday, May 15, 2017

In September 2016 we released Oceanhorn on PS4 and Xbox One, our very first console game. Since its release we received so much love and overwhelmingly positive feedback from console gaming community. Thank you so much!

Oceanhorn is our love letter to action adventures from past generations and combines the action and puzzle elements from Zelda games with the emotional journey of the Final Fantasy and Mana series.

Oceanhorn on PSVita in action

Wow these colours pop on the PS Vita screen!

Soon after launch we received many requests from players who’d love a portable PS Vita version of this game so we decided to do a Twitter Poll about it. What followed was an incredible Tsunami of likes and retweets – it blew us away! We are very happy to announce that Oceanhorn – Monster of Uncharted Seas will arrive on PS Vita on May 17th, 2017.

Taking full advantage of PS Vita

We’ve been working hard to deliver the same gameplay experience that you’ve loved on consoles, so we put many hours into optimizing our code. We’re very happy to confirm that the whole game runs beautifully on the PS Vita delivering smooth performance all the way through the entire game.

It’s just amazing to see the game coming to life on the colourful PS Vita display. Everything looks so expressive, adding an extra punch to the huge variety of islands like rainy forests or scorching desserts. Explore all of them on the go!

The game will take you from the deepest dungeons to the highest skies

Beautiful Game for a beautiful Handheld System

We didn’t stop with just porting it, we also added features to take advantage of the Vita in unique ways. You decide if you want to use them or play in a traditional way. First of all we enabled Touch Screen for casting spells and to navigate the menus. This is a very comfortable and direct way of choosing targets or menu options. Furthermore we enabled PlayStation TV so you can play on the big screen.

Oh and in case you’re wondering: The game features its own set of trophies, so all trophy hunters rejoice, another Platinum Trophy to hunt for. Altogether we aimed to deliver a must have for every PS Vita library and it’s our way of saying thanks for your support. Cheers!

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

It is news time! Oceanhorn 2: Knights of the Lost Realm will make a gameplay debut with a playable demo in Nordic Game 2017!

If you are coming to Malmö, head to Epic Games' booth and come and see what we have in store for the new Oceanhorn game! So whether you're a fan, a journalist, a publisher or a fellow game developer – we would be delighted to give you a tour on our game and talk more about Oceanhorn 2.

Oceanhorn 2: Knights of the Lost Realm is a continuation to Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas, a million selling action RPG title released for iOS, Mac, Steam, PS4, Xbox One, Android and later this year for Nintendo Switch. Oceanhorn 2 is powered by the unrivaled Unreal Engine 4.

We could not be more excited about Nordic Game ourselves. In addition to Oceanhorn 2's big moment, Fumito Ueda is also going to be in Malmö! He is the mastermind behind Ico, Shadow of the Colossus and The Last Guardian and we are big fans of his work. It seems like Action RPG's are only now starting to catch up what Shadow of the Colossus did 12 years ago. The carefully crafted spirit of his games and the brilliance of his game designs are a driving force for game developers like us.

Friday, January 27, 2017

The reveal of Oceanhorn 2's development got an amazing reception from all of you back in August. Thank you so much!

It has been five months now and we have been very busy working on the game, to fulfill our dream project one asset and feature at a time. Unfortunately, we haven't had time to give you guys any updates. Let's remedy that right here, right now!

Oceanhorn 2 looks stunning on mobile

Weighing our options

Over the years, we have learned that making a video game is a huge undertaking. For Oceanhorn 1 we did everything from ground up, from using a proprietary game engine, designing and developing our own full featured level editor to a highly laborious porting and upgrading work that had to be done for other platforms.

When we were dreaming up what Oceanhorn 2 should be like, we knew that we would have to do everything from ground up yet again if we would continue using our own tools. To meet the high expectations of the video game audience on mobile, high-end PCs and consoles, we decided to start developing Oceanhorn 2 on Unreal Engine 4.

New perspective takes you in the center of the action

Powered by Unreal Engine 4

Unreal Engine is a game engine that has proven itself in hundreds of big titles over the past 20 years. Its graphical capabilities and level editing tools are the best the industry has to offer. We have the artistic freedom, and to ensure we can achieve what we set out to do, Epic allows us developers to access the engine source code. With Unreal Engine 4, we basically have hundreds of man years of video game development backing us up, and delivering our uncompromised dream is still going to be in our own hands in the end!

"With Unreal Engine 4, we have hundreds of man years of video game development backing us up"

This project has introduced a lot of new and exciting things for us, from new ways of thinking to new tools and workflows. As an artist, I had to learn everything about physically based rendering. It provides an intuitive way to express the realistic properties of the materials for the renderer. It is a relatively new way to get realistic looking materials for a modern game engine that handles realistic lighting.

Our game has an artistically stylized look, but even our style benefits from the physically based rendering. Pixar animations have used it for years, but these days we can render it in realtime, even on mobile.

Good things come to those who wait

When setting up the renderer and materials, we wanted to make sure everything will work on both PC and mobile. Minor differences can be seen in some of the screen space effects, as all of them are not yet feasible on mobile hardware. We started optimizing the project for the mobile right from the beginning, and when we started to test out our game on actual mobile hardware, our efforts paid off.

The development and discovery

In our previous announcement blog post we shed light on some of the new gameplay aspects featured in Oceanhorn 2. These were just a few examples of the features that will make Oceanhorn 2 truly special. We will be sharing more exciting news with you in the upcoming months.

A knight's weapon Caster in action

There is a certain unrevealed element in the game that makes Oceanhorn 2 different when compared to other games in the same genre. We have been experimenting with this element right from the beginning, and we are starting to see the impact it has on Oceanhorn 2.

When developing new and exciting elements to the game, our main goal is always to improve the player’s experience and reinforce his or her emotional investment to the the world and story. We also aim to enrich the aspects that people loved in the original game, such as exploration.

In many ways, experimenting with features is one of the perks of being an indie company. If we come up with the best thing ever for an action RPG at any given time, we can go ahead and add it to the game.

Mobile graphics of 2017!

In our day to day development, we have reached a point where we can produce game content fast. More cutscenes and levels are being added to the game every week and the quests are starting to shape up. Still, we have a long road ahead of us to finish this game and I hope Oceanhorn fans can wait patiently.

We have received lots of questions about the platforms which Oceanhorn 2 will be released on. We can’t confirm all of the platforms yet. What we can say is that Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas sold over 1 million copies on all platforms combined, but let’s remember it started out as an amazing iOS adventure game. Oceanhorn 2 will definitely come out on iOS.